


two speed trains

by ivermectin



Category: Gossip Girl (TV 2007)
Genre: Alcohol, Banter, Conversations, Dan & Blair are Best Friends, Dan Humphrey is Not Gossip Girl, Endgame: Dan/Blair, F/M, Introspection, Jealousy, Minor Dan/Serena, POV Blair Waldorf, Past Chuck/Blair, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 06 Finale, but like - non-sexual jealousy, chuck doesn't come up in this fic much, except as Blair's Ex, no infidelity, not derena friendly, what can i say: i love leighton meester, yes i snuck in a single parents reference in there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:22:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27799177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivermectin/pseuds/ivermectin
Summary: If Dan was her husband, she wouldn’t ever let him go to seedy clubs alone. Then again, Danisn’ther husband, and she stops him from staying at seedy clubs anyway.
Relationships: Dan Humphrey/Blair Waldorf
Comments: 25
Kudos: 72





	two speed trains

**Author's Note:**

> okay so this entire Thing ended up being written because i had One specific dialogue in my head, and I was like "can't let this banter go to waste!" so I wrote this whole fic around it. yeah, i know. 
> 
> Blair's a little older and wiser so I mellowed her character a bit - it's character growth! she's doing her best to be a good mom (ie, not Eleanor), hence. Dan's a bit broody, because ... I like doing that to him, apparently. what can I say!

It’s a Friday night, and Blair Waldorf is on Dan-duty. Nate, meanwhile, is on Serena-duty. The happy couple has had yet another unhappy disagreement, and Blair had needed to rescue Dan from some gay club where he’d been doing shots and looking like he was considering licking some random man’s neck. Typical Humphrey nonsense, really.

Blair’s a single mother, sure. But she’s not the only single parent she knows, and it’s easy for her to call someone from the single parents’ support group they’d formed somehow during the first week of kindergarten that involved chipping in to help each other when needed. Blair’s done her fair share of babysitting her friends’ kids.

She’s not the Blair Waldorf she thought she’d grow up to be, but whenever she looks at Henry, she thinks the Blair Waldorf she became is so much better than who she’d wanted to be, anyway.

The babysitting is easy to organise, and she shifts slots over with one of her friends, drops Henry off, and in a matter of minutes, is able to give the situation at hand her full attention. Blair has always been great at damage control. (True, she’s also always been great at causing damage, but maybe that’s why she’s so good at fixing it. She knows all the tricks.)

Rescuing Dan is easy. He isn’t going to cheat on Serena even drunk and angry; she’s certain of that. Right now he’s bitter, though, and he typically visits the sort of clubs he hopes nobody will follow him to when he gets like this.

Blair isn’t sure what he’s playing at. She’s like a dog with a bone, when it comes to doing what needs to be done for her friends, even if it means playing dirty. It’s always been that way. She follows him to the seediest clubs, where he never does anything except sit around, drink liquor, stare at pole dancers, and look like he is method acting for being Prometheus.

It’s all routine by now, leading him out. He’s taller and stronger than her, but she’s always been strong willed, and it’s as easy as she can hope for, getting him into a cab and driving him back to her apartment, where she can get him cleaned up and sorted out before she delivers him back to Serena’s doorstep, tidy and presentable.

He makes a beeline for the bathroom, and throws up immediately. Blair winces in sympathy; who knows how much the man has drunk. If Dan was her husband, she wouldn’t ever let him go to seedy clubs alone. Then again, Dan _isn’t_ her husband, and she stops him from staying at seedy clubs anyway.

“She always takes everything from me,” he says abruptly, tired and slurring. “Blair, you know what it’s like, don’t you? Everything I’ve ever had to work for just falls into her lap.”

Blair does know what it’s like. She also knows he’s not being fair to Serena, but then again, Serena isn’t being fair to Dan either. They’re both soap opera levels of dramatic – they never get violent, but their levels of aggression builds into a crescendo of hurt feelings and no closure at all. Serena had apparently called Dan a gold digger and a sugar baby, and Dan had rolled his eyes and said something to her about how she was so distant from real human experience, with her private jets and millionaire mother, that he’d rather have no money than be with her.

In her experience, they both yell it all out, and then find some deep pit of sadness which pulls them both back together. Fond apologies will be made, make-up sex will be had, they’ll both be extra tender and considerate and sweet to each other for anywhere from a few weeks to two months, and then the resentment will build up and explode again. She thinks it’s a good thing that they don’t have any children.

Despite being best friends with Dan in a mature and adult way, she’s been friends with Serena from childhood in a way that was co-dependent and almost parasitic at times, on both their ends. Some days Blair thinks, gloomily, that she doesn’t know where Serena ends and she begins. Chuck still thinks it’s Serena who stole Blair away from him, and Serena had stood her ground on how Blair was never a possession who belonged to anyone, anyway. The Non-Judging Breakfast Club had dissolved pretty quick, after that.

A lot of the time, Blair thinks Serena is wrong. She doesn’t really belong to herself, not in the way she belongs to Serena.

So, defending Serena is easy, and complicated, because Dan’s just thrown up from drinking too much, and she’s holding him upright, cleaning him up, brushing his teeth, and it reminds her of Serena, a parallel she can’t voice to him, at all. Instead, she says, “Don’t you think you’re being a little unfair? Sure, Serena’s charismatic in a way you aren’t –” (in her head she adds, _in a way that you and I_ both _aren’t_ ) “but she’s not intentionally sabotaging you or anything. People just like her more than you.”

“S’ not that,” Dan says, not very clearly. “It’s. Blair, her blog, _Serendipity on a Ferris Wheel_? It’s better than anything I’ve put out there. I spent my whole life writing and working on it, and she just sits at a computer and spits out words and that’s it, she’s everywhere, and everyone wants to listen to her.”

“Well, yeah,” Blair says, sighing. She leads Dan out of the bathroom, puts him on the bed. “You always knew Serena was popular, Dan. Why are you threatened by it?”

“My dad laughed aloud reading her blog,” Dan admits. He sounds almost sober, and deeply sad. Blair sort of wants to smack him with a rolled-up newspaper. Not to hurt him, just to get him out of his funk. “He’s never done that with my writing.”

“Well, _yes_ , because you write the most _gloomy, angsty_ , and _pretentious_ semi-autobiographical nonsense I’ve ever read!” Blair says, giving him an unimpressed look. “If your dad laughed while reading your work, I would be _highly concerned_.”

Dan smiles, despite himself.

“Listen,” Blair says, and it’s weird that she is this person now. “There isn’t a finite amount of success, Dan. Serena could be super famous! She could have her face in tabloids, everywhere, she could get her own documentary. That doesn’t mean that _you_ will never make it big. Face it, you’ll never get anywhere if you keep comparing yourself to her like this.” Softer, more seriously, she adds, “I should know.”

Dan looks at her, eyes serious and wide, practically doe-like with childlike innocence. Blair doesn’t understand Dan; the soft centre of him. Nobody’s ever lasted in their social circles without becoming some kind of jagged edge. Dan’s not really ever a bitch though, except with Serena. Which brings her to the next topic, which is, “Why do you stay with Serena? You’re both making each other miserable.”

Dan exhales, deeply, tilting his head upwards aimlessly. Blair catches herself looking at the hollow column of his throat, makes herself look away. He is not hers to look at anymore.

“Some part of us is just too comfortable, I think,” he says, quietly. “The happiest time of my life, the easiest time of my life, Blair, is when I was sixteen years old and in love with Serena van der Woodsen. I want to go back to that.”

He’s clearly not sober, if he’s admitting this much. But then again, Dan Humphrey has always been candid. There’s no guarantee that he wouldn’t have this conversation with her sober.

“That’s the thing,” Blair thinks, staring down at her hands, naked and devoid of marriage ring, somehow freer than ever. It didn’t feel like giving up anything, moving on from Chuck. She’d been so ready to grieve him, but all she’d felt was a sick, dizzying, almost scary sense of relief. “You can’t go back. You and Serena aren’t sixteen anymore, which I’m sure you’ve somehow grasped, even with your tenuous grasp of mathematics. Grow up, Humphrey!”

Dan laughs silently, the way he always does when she’s snarky with him.

“You deserve to be happy,” she tells him. “And so does Serena, and I am sick of seeing my best friends miserable, and making each other miserable.”

“I just,” Dan shrugs, shifts, lies down awkwardly. Blair moves, puts his head on her lap.

“You just?” Blair prompts.

“It sounds silly,” he says. “But I think I planned out my life with Serena, a little. I thought we’d settle down, have kids, maybe get a cat. A small house in the suburbs, I figured. But the more we try to build something together, the more clear it is that we’re not aligned, Blair. We’re like two speed trains moving in different directions. We’ll never get anywhere.”

Blair hums appreciatively. “Good metaphor,” she says. “I’m starting to understand why the book critics gobble you up, even if your ability to make fictional characters who are _original_ is practically non-existent.”

“Hush, Waldorf, you,” Dan says, rolling his eyes. “Do you know what I mean, though? You spend your whole life dreaming a daydream, and then you marry the girl of your dreams, so why aren’t you happy?”

“Because life isn’t a dream,” Blair offers, softly. “I’ve been through similar, you know. I always envisioned my life around Nate, and then he flaked on me. And then there was Chuck. We kept going back to each other, even though we weren’t happy together, because we didn’t know any other way to be. There’s comfort in that familiarity, after all. I don’t need to worry about being vulnerable around someone who’s seen me at my worst, maybe. But that doesn’t mean I owe it to him, to stay. Especially since none of us are the same people we started out as. All of us are growing.”

Dan looks at her, hazy eyed. There is something thoughtful in his expression, like he’s thinking something over.

“You’re so clever when you put your mind to it,” he says, through a yawn. “You’re quite frankly terrifying.”

Blair beams, and feels like she’s seventeen again, but without the petty need to knock him down a peg. “I know,” she says.

He smiles back. “Do you think,” he begins. “You and I,” he starts, and then he closes his eyes.

“Do I think?” Blair frowns. “Hello? Humphrey? Dan?”

But no luck; he’s fallen asleep in the middle of the sentence. Blair puts a hand on his head, running it through his curly hair and feeling oddly heavy in a way she can’t put words to. She wishes he’d finished asking the question. She suspects her answer would’ve been yes.

-

[ Later on, when the divorce is finalised after three months of tension and an oddly unnatural, forced sort of joviality, Dan and Serena part ways. Serena goes on some cruise around the world, with Nate and Carter Baizen (Blair’s sure they’re having some kind of threesome or open relationship or polyamory thing, but she’s not going to ask, though she might put Dan up to it if she feels particularly sadistic later).

Dan becomes a high school English teacher (Serena texts him to tell him that she thinks it’s _hot_ , and Dan smiles genuinely. It’s strange, how well Dan and Serena fit when they’re just friends and nothing more.) He moves house to be closer to the school, and after a few months, he moves in with Henry and with Blair.

When he kisses her for the first time, After, she puts her hands on his hips and clasps, and it’s like the last bit of _something_ falls into place.

_You’re right where you belong_ , she wants to tell him, but she pours the sentiment into the kiss instead, smiles at him softly.

He shifts, looks at her with the sort of warmth in his expression, like he believes in her. He kisses her like he’s saying, _I know. You are, too._ ]

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr gg blog here, you know the drill. ](https://dancommablair.tumblr.com/) hope you enjoyed!


End file.
